


Don't Listen

by PreludeInZ



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Blood, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2523785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my first TF2 fanfic. I have this theory. Call it a headcanon, I guess, that’s what all you hip young kids are doing (haha, im 26). See, I ship Scout/Pauling, because I think maybe secretly they are perfect for each other. Maybe secretly she is just as awkward and just as bad at being a fawning damsel as he is at being suave. And I like badass ladies who have secret crushes that they DO NOT WANT and find SEVERELY INCONVENIENT. So maybe this is what Expiration Date might have looked like if the roles were a little bit reversed.</p><p>Personal thanks to Pemm for her encouragement and the initial inspiration from her lovely Scout/Pauling comfort fic. I wouldn't have gotten started in this fandom without her, and I have been having such a lot of fun ever since then!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pemm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/gifts).



Five was probably too many. Granted, “too many” was a highly situational number rated on a sliding scale, and generally speaking it didn’t pay to bet against the mercs, but still. Alone, in unfamiliar territory, in the dark, on an atypical mission, five was probably too many.

Still, Miss Pauling had been surprised before.

 

Scout had surprised her very recently. First by going abruptly silent, mid-sentence. It was the silence that was surprising, because his typically inane, vaguely flirtatious babble was easy to tune out. They were waiting in the narrow alley behind the warehouse that had been the dropoff point. She had a chunky blue briefcase handcuffed to her wrist. It was heavy, but their ride would be here soon. Scout hadn’t shut up since the back door of the warehouse had slammed shut behind him. That had been the point past which she had said he would be allowed to talk again. She felt a little bad, but she’d privately been wondering just what he’d had to do to weasel his way into escorting her on this particular pickup. Usually it was Heavy who did this particular job, on account of being massive and intimidating, besides not really trusting it to anyone else. He wouldn’t have handed it off lightly. Especially not to Scout. No one really expected trouble, obviously.

He surprised her again, when she looked up from fiddling with the steel cuff about her wrist to see him tense, alert and listening. She was about to tease him about finally being able to hear herself think, when she was unceremoniously shoved in between a dumpster and a pile of pallets. That had been extremely surprising.

Then the dim orange light they’d been waiting beneath had blinked out, and the doors of the warehouse they had just exited had banged open, and there were five of them. Well, six, initially, but Pauling felt that the one who Scout shot in the face as the doors flew open didn’t count. It was unwise to be the first out the door, of course that would get you shot in the face.

There was now a run in her stockings, and goddamn it, they were new. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself up on her elbows. She hitched up her skirt and tugged her pistol from its holster, glad she’d had the foresight to cuff the briefcase to her left hand. Her left hand, which had wrenched awkwardly against the cuff about her wrist when she’d landed. Edging up against the dumpster, Miss Pauling squinted into the messy snarl of a fight in the dark alley.

Of course Scout would be in the very middle of it. There was no way she’d be afforded a clear shot. Distantly, she heard a screech of tires and staccato gunfire, further off than she’d hoped, by the sounds of it. Ah. That would have been their ride. She had been hoping they might have had back up. Though for the moment, at least, Scout didn’t look like he needed it.

Not that he ever did. Crucially, not that he never  _needed_ back up, but that at least he never looked like he did. It may have had something to do with the maniac grin and the way he had of laughing and whooping his way through a fight. He had already dropped one of the men who’d surrounded him with a cleated kick square in the jaw, wormed his way out of being halfway pinned to the ground by another, and now his shotgun swung up and a broad, explosive blast of birdshot emptied into the fray. Miss Pauling flinched backward as she heard a few sharp pings ricochet off the dumpster where she’d taken cover. If their attackers had guns, they had the sense not to use them in close quarters.

It was the second shot she’d been waiting for, though, and she darted out to the back wall of the warehouse. There were four figures left, tussling in the dark, and she knew she needed not to hit one of them. The moon was bright, and her eyes had mostly adjusted. As she pressed her back against the wall, her shoulder brushed the sharp corner of a metal box. Prying it open, she located a tripped circuit, and flipped the switch. Better.

The orange light blinked back on, and she shouted, “Down!” in the specific tone of voice that made nine grown men snap to obey her. She fired three times, then frowned, squinted, and fired a fourth time at the only one of the thugs who’d had the presence of mind to run when she’d shouted. And then there were none.

Silence again. The sort of silence that let Miss Pauling hear the blood pounding in her ears beneath the ringing of the gunshots still echoing in the alley. And that let her relish the cold, addictive thrill which was the reason she’d gotten this job. Also part of the reason she’d been expelled from secretarial school. She hadn’t even known secretarial schools did that. It was a long story.

“Scout, could you get up?” Pauling reholstered her pistol, and adjusted her skirt. She reflected that she should have let Scout carry the briefcase. He had offered, but this was a different sort of mission, and she had been professional and declined. Technically it was against protocol, but it was heavy and now her wrist felt sprained. Mildly, but still. Oh well. He would have bludgeoned someone to death with it anyway, and that would have been hard to explain away. “…Scout, can you hear me?”

It was near the top of the list (and she did have a list, in a locked drawer of her desk, filed under “Quarry Equipment Requisitions/Manifests”) of Scout’s flaws that he didn’t listen. Not usually. He had listened to “Down” though, flat on his stomach with his hands on his head. Miss Pauling nudged him in the hip with her foot. “Scout. Did you hear me?”

He stirred and she suddenly realized that he hadn’t, actually, before just then. “Heard you,” he answered, pushing himself up to look around and grimacing. “Maybe only answered in my head, though. They gone?”

"Dead," Miss Pauling confirmed and crouched beside him. The toe of her shoe was wet. "Scout, can you hold still a second?"

He either hadn’t heard or wasn’t listening and twisted to sit up. “You shoot a couple? I got three. No guns on ‘em I could see, maybe wanted it quiet.” He paused and seemed to shudder slightly. “Knives, though. Mighta got knicked. Oh, God, you okay? Shit, I didn’t even ask.”

"No, it’s okay, I’m fine. Scout, listen, hold still." She could pretend that she hadn’t initially noticed the blood because his shirt was red and it was dim in the alley, but that was a terrible excuse, because this was a dark, seeping, obvious red and she could see just fine.

"S’fine, ain’t deep. Hey, Miss Pauling, we oughta move…"

"Scout,  _hold still_.”

That made him stop. “Sorry.”

Adrenaline was a hell of a thing, but how he didn’t seem to notice the clean, deep gash running at an upward angle from his hip almost to his spine was ridiculous. Clearly the mercs did a job that required a high pain tolerance, but Pauling sometimes suspected they also ran around under the influence of a latent cocktail of pain killers. Probably accountable to Medic.

Now she tugged his shirt up and bit her lip. Lots of blood. She had never had a knack for eyeballing quantities. Especially not pulsing, clotting quantities. “Okay.” Medic was not currently available. Not within shouting distance, anyway. She was already shrugging out of her purple cardigan. Which of course was not going to come off over the briefcase shackled to her wrist. She swore.

"Jesus, that bad?"

Yes. “No. Hang on.” It required some awkward contortion, but she managed to free her knife from its sheath on her left thigh. She sliced the knit cotton sleeve of her cardigan open from wrist to neckline and rolled and folded the body of it tightly. “This is going to hurt.”

He laughed.  _Laughed._  A little shakily now, but still. “Aw, c’mon, I’m tougher’n tha—” She jammed her sweater against the small of his back and cut him off. He managed a short, hoarse shout of pain before slumping to his side.

"Oh, no, no, don’t do that," she muttered, half to herself, shifting onto her knees to keep up pressure, tying the sleeves of her cardigan as tightly as she could, knotted snugly at Scout’s hip. Thankfully she bought them in bulk, she did not want this one back. "Scout, don’t. Come on, Scout, you can hear me, wake up."

She couldn’t quite tell how long it had been since they were supposed to have been picked up by the others. Heavy and Medic, Pyro and Engineer were prowling around, supposedly keeping up a perimeter. Miss Pauling had a finely honed sense of time, but it sometimes got muddled up and dissolved in a situation like this. It had maybe been five minutes since they’d been jumped?

Scout, at least, was only a couple more seconds in coming back around. Now there was a mumbled torrent of pained cursing, and then he sat up again, pulling Miss Pauling’s hand away from where it still pressed against the small of his back.. “Okay. Blacked out a bit, maybe. A little.” He rocked back on his heels and stood, twisting and peering under her makeshift bandage. “Damn, ow. Miss Pauling, you maybe wanna warn me before you do that kinda thing? I get hurt, I generally start hurtin’ people right back. C’mon, we gotta go.”

He held out a hand and she stared at it dumbly for a few moments. This was not what she’d expected. An evening full of surprises. “I  _did_  warn you, get back down here, that is a lot of blood.”

He ticked off his answers on long, nail-bitten fingers. “Fair point, no, an’ less than it looks like, but not dealin’ with it now anyway. Up, c’mon.” He bent, wincing, and tugged on her elbow, gentle, but insistent. “Where’s the others?”

God, he could be pig-headed. Stubborn. Well, so could she. “I don’t know, I think they ran into trouble right when we did. Look, you’re hurt…”

“ _Really_? No shit, wonder how I missed that.” Miss Pauling generally thought of Scout ( _if_ she even did, when she did, which was not often, because why would she) with his usual dumb, overconfident grin, was used to seeing him in a fit of scrappy, adrenaline fueled temper. But she didn’t usually see him sarcastic and irritated, and definitely not irritated with her. Even less often, though, she saw him visibly nervous. This was only for a moment, a brief flash of anxiety as he glanced up and down the alley. “Shit. Sorry. Okay. Listen, all right, you seen me get worse then this probably like a hundred times, seriously. It’s fine, I mean it. I ain’t showin’ off, it hurts like a bastard, but I’m okay. Hell, I did not want this job, this is Heavy’s job, he can take a hit like that about twenty times better than I can, he owes me  _big_. Augh, god. Miss Pauling, c’mon, please, I gotta job an’ you gotta job. Your job is carrying that thing. My job is getting you the hell outta dodge if things’re goin’ sideways. If I been stabbed by six guys in an alley, it’s ‘cause things went sideways, and we  _gotta_  get out. Okay?”

Well, one of them could be pig-headed, anyway. She didn’t want to be pig-headed, so she would let him be stubborn. His shotgun sat on the ground next to her, and she handed it up to him instead of taking the hand she was offered. She drew her own gun and stood up, readjusting her grip on the briefcase. Her wrist felt distinctly less sprained, given that Scout had nearly been cut in half. “Okay. You’re right, let’s go.”

He tugged her elbow once more, so she moved ahead of him, then nudged her down the alley. It was darker, the way they headed, and eventually Miss Pauling began to feel a bit like she was being herded down a long dark tunnel, even with the moon and the stars overhead. She didn’t remember, offhand, what was at the end of the alley. Admittedly, no one had given due diligence to the particulars of this mission. Take a handful of the mercs, meet shadowy, mysterious figures in a secret, usually semi-abandoned location, and pick up/drop off a briefcase full of…well, it varied. Usually, she was briefed about the contents, just enough to be able to check them over. It was the sort of mission the Adminstrator sometimes handed down, when things were slow, meant to be quick, easy. Take the boys out and run them a bit, keep the pack sharp. Like a jog around the park near Pauling’s apartment.

Which was something she should have apparently been doing more of, lately, because even at a brisk trot, they hadn’t yet wound their way to the end of the alley, and she was already a little winded. Scout was quiet, still shadowing her, glancing forward every now and again, but mostly trying to make sure they weren’t being followed. Even if it was supposed to be straightforward and it had all gone a little wrong, she wasn’t particularly nervous. Nervousness wasn’t really in her nature.

Scout was jumpier than she’d ever seen him, and was plainly spooked when she stopped to catch her breath. “Whoa, you okay? Miss Pauling? Hey, something wrong?”

“I’m  _fine_ , Scout. Do you know where we’re going?” Miss Pauling paused. Actually, she hadn’t meant to sound as terse as she had.  _And, also, how are you? Since, you know, you’re the one who’s actually bleeding out, and it’s different being in the middle of it than it is watching you do this on grainy little grey TV screens in the office._ She wasn’t going to say it quite like that, though. She just softened her tone. “Are you okay?”

“No, good, I’m good, yeah. Medic’ll get it. Uh, we need to find a mailbox.”

“A mailbox.”

“Yeah.”

He stopped, leaned against the wall next to her. She was tired (but only harried-overworked-secretary-tired, which even in her flavour of work was not actually really that tired), a little out of breath, and her wrist was bruised. On an off night, Miss Pauling had watched Scout run a few dozen aimless laps of the gym, and still have bored, pent-up energy to burn, with push-ups and sit-ups and other assorted aerobic things. Not that there was any good reason to be watching a camera pointed at the training gym on an off-night. There was no way a quarter mile down an alley should have had him looking drawn and short of breath. “Engi’s got a lot of maps.”

This was a complete non sequitur, and even if it was Scout, concerning. “Right. I bet he does. Since I need a breather anyway, you let me look at your back. Okay?”

“Medic’ll get it,” he repeated, distantly. “Listen, there’s a buncha rules for if we get split up. Us. Not you an’ me, I mean. I mean, us mercs. Wait, you don’t know ‘bout this? With the mailbox?”

“Are you in shock?”

“You fuss worse than my ma. We gotta keep going.”

There was a smear of dark blood left on the wall when he pushed away from it again, and Pauling planted her feet and shook her head. “No. You sit, you tell me where we’re going, and then we’ll go.”

“Miss Pauling,  _seriously_ , not with this again.” Scout hadn’t bothered getting irritated this time and had gone straight into high anxiety. “Six guys in an alley? Remember? They weren’t after lettin’ a couple pints of blood outta _me,_ Miss Pauling. Whatever they want, you are wearin’ it for a charm bracelet. You make me stop, it’s hard to get goin’ again, so we gotta get while the gettin’s good.”

Oh, goddammit. Miss Pauling held a private suspicion, given what she knew about the Administrator and her methods, that the aforementioned “six guys” had been cannon fodder. Anyone they ran into tonight had no possible chance of actually achieving whatever they  _thought_ they’d been hired to do. They were just a few bones for the mercs to chew on, get their blood up. She wouldn’t be able to confirm it, not til they were back, and she did wish she’d been warned, but probably the stakes weren’t nearly what they looked like. They almost never were. Time to change tactics. “Scout, you make as much in a month as I make in a year. We don’t know where Medic is, you are in godawful shape, and if you die when I could’ve fixed it, whatever’s left on your contract comes out of  _my_ salary. And I would maybe like to own a house someday. And also not have to sell all my teeth and most of my organs.”

This was a boldfaced lie. The terms of her contract were labyrinthine, occasionally tangential, and weirdly, specifically inexplicable in places (“The undersigned will maintain availability on the third Tuesday of every month ending in “Y” for a period of time not extending beyond 308 weeks from the end date of this contract.”) But she certainly wasn’t responsible for keeping the mercs alive. Medic was probably not even technically responsible for—Medic was  _definitely_  not responsible for keeping his comrades alive. Pauling wasn’t really sure if anyone was. Maybe the Administrator. That was a discouraging thought.

"Well, then we’re gonna hurry. I’m okay."

The moral conundrum of “Keep Miss Pauling safe vs. Keep Miss Pauling out of crippling debt and a life of abject poverty” was apparently not enough to get Scout to stop. She changed tactics again. “Look, we have got two solid walls and clear lines of sight on anyone coming at us—which no one will. If we get out in the open, and we don’t find the others? I’m going to have to do this anyway, and it’ll be riskier. It’s faster if you do what I want.”  _-and I am really starting to worry about you_ was on the tip of her tongue for a moment, but went unsaid.

And, god, he did look pale. Really. And he cradled his shotgun loosely in both hands, and she was pretty sure she could have snatched it off him and knocked him over, but not quite sure enough to try. Definitely not sure enough to try, it was a terrible idea. Instead she put a hand on his arm and looked up, trying to seem firm and not flirty. Scout got those two mixed up. Though this may have been a rare window in which she could get away with it, it was the wrong place and the wrong time and the wrong gamble. She took a deep breath, and attempted the right gamble.

“I just want to look, I did a year at nursing school.”

Do not give him an inch. Do not give Scout a single inroad into picturing you in a nurse costume. If it hadn’t occurred to him before, it would now be impossible to get him to think of anything else. Never do that. Pauling, anyway, had never actually gotten as far as the nurse uniform. Uniform, of course, not costume. Uniforms were professional, costumes were tawdry. Nursing school, no, she wasn’t surprised you could be expelled from that, because cheating was a serious thing if you were supposed to be working in the medical industry. She had been lucky just to be expelled and not arrested. Funnily, she never would have dreamt of cheating. Cheating had not gotten her expelled. But apparently stealing a foot from the morgue and leaving it in the dean’s bed was not a “silly prank” and did not fall under “girlish hi-jinks” as much as “actually a felony, where is your father’s checkbook.”

“You were a  _nurse_?” For all that Scout was terribly, tremendously annoying with his stupid smile and his endless braggadocio and the fact that he would flirt with anything with a pulse and a skirt, Miss Pauling hadn’t realized how scary it would actually be when he stopped doing any of the things that were supposed to annoy her the most. So, what, it cost her some dignity and some gravitas, maybe, but it got him to grin again. Irrepressibly, like he couldn’t help it. “Miss Pauling, you can  _have_ whatever I make in a year if you tell me more about  _that_. Did you have the little white hat thing?”

“I was not a nurse, I flunked out of school before the first semester even ended.” This was either more or less embarrassing than the truth, but she wasn’t certain which. It seemed more believable, anyway. She put the briefcase down and crouched next to it. Stupid, pointless, heavy thing. She tugged the back of his pant leg. “Come on, down. Just let me see.”

Well, he was listening now, at least. So far, this was the only good thing about the situation, because her sweater was soaked. And now her hands were slick and warm and wet and the impulse to wipe them on the clean part of his shirt was, in hindsight, not a good one. It worked fine, it just seemed insensitive. The chain on the briefcase was long enough that she could use both hands, but she wished for a bit more freedom of movement. And about eight rolls of gauze. And tape. And probably more of whatever Scout’s blood type was. And Medic.

“Aw, you’re just yankin’ my chain.” He sounded genuinely disappointed. “Miss Pauling, you are like the smartest person I know, you ain’t flunked out of anything.”

“Engineer is the smartest person you know,” she corrected, absently. “Hold still. Then Medic, then Spy, and a tie between Sniper and Heavy, unless you speak Russian, and you and the others are all less dumb than I think, so the rest of the list changes when you surprise me. And all right, I didn’t flunk out of nursing school, but apparently I should have, because I barely remember any first aid, and I didn’t put nearly enough pressure on this. I was only ever good with the cadavers. Good god, Scout, how are you even still standing?”

“Crouching. Not standing right now. That’s gonna be hard to do, in a second here. An’ it’s my job. Ain’t like it’s fun, right now.” He paused a moment and corrected, “Maybe a little fun. ‘Less dumb than you think’. That’s  _real_ nice.” Pauling could hear the note of smug satisfaction in his voice. But also the tight, slightly clipped way he spoke. Less dumb than she thought, and less okay than he said. “That is maybe the flirtiest thing you ever said to me, Miss Pauling, this ain’t the time for that kinda talk.”

No, it really wasn’t. “Scout, I think maybe you had better sit down. Look, I can find the team. You wait here, I won’t be long. It’s fine, really.”

He sighed and shrugged off the hand she’d put on his shoulder. “Miss Pauling. Listen, Heavy asked me to do this an’ I said sure, ‘cause I ain’t about to let him know I think I  _can’t,_ and anyway it’s  _you_ , this is supposed to be one of those damn dumb easy jobs. An’ hey, you’re cute an’ this is cute, with the being all worried and pretending you’re a nurse. Really. It’s like my birthday, except I got what I wanted. But hell an’ goddamn, woman, no one warned me that  _you don’t listen._ I can’t stop, and we gotta go.”

“But I think you’re going to bleed to death.”

And now he blew up at her a little bit, “Well,  _I_  think you failed outta nursin’ school and you ain’t Medic and we gotta go!” Scout put a hand against the wall and stumbled to his feet. “Miss Pauling, no one listens to me, it’s fine, I don’t give a crap. Honest to god. I talk too damn much, I ain’t dumb enough I don’t know  _that_. Seven older brothers, you think anyone ever listened to a word I said since I been born _? I’m used to it_. I don’t care if you hear a single goddamn word I say, ever, unless we are in a dark goddamn alley with guys after us and I am trying to do my job and it  _matters_. Just.  _Please_.”

_Holy shit._

“Okay.”  _Oh god, I am going to be fired._ She wriggled her wrist out of the handcuff that had tethered her to the briefcase and got up. Technically she was supposed to be able to do that, but the Administrator had the key. Anyway, it just seemed imprudent to have something valuable handcuffed to her wrist, when she was in a business with individuals who thought of cutting off hands before they thought of cutting off handcuffs. And that was just the mercs. “Scout, wait. I’m okay with people, I’m  _great_ with cadavers, but I am  _really, really_ bad at the part that comes in between.”

Like the part where someone she wasn’t actually trying to murder crumpled onto the ground and stopped moving. She was terrible at that part. The run in her stockings had turned into a huge hole in the knee. “…Scout?”

There was a trashcan.  _Stainless steel, bent lid._ It was in between two doorways.  _Blue with a red DO NOT ENTER sign, and grey, blank, no handle._  On the right side of the alley  _North wall._ Miss Pauling popped the lid off the trashcan and dropped the briefcase inside.  _Okay._

“Scout? Hey.” He didn’t move when she knelt and shook his shoulder, or when she pushed him over onto his side. She had never been able to find a pulse in a person’s wrist to save her life, not even in nursing school, so she ran her fingers beneath the line of his jaw. It still took her a few moments to locate a faint, thready beat. This was stupid, she could hear him breathing. And he moved a little, and moaned and blinked. With his stupid blue eyes.

“I’m sorry. It’s going to be all right, listen, I swear no one’s coming. This…tonight, it’s not what it seems like. I’ll go get Medic and the others. I didn’t flunk out of nursing school, I got expelled, but still, I can help with this. Look, I’ve never had one of you bleeding all over me, I got scared. I mean, not really  _scared_ -scared, just…Scout, don’t die.”

“I’m  _not_. Go. West, outta here. Find a mailbox, wait. Hide. God. I hate my job.”

That was the last thing he said, with a pained shudder and a sigh, before shutting his eyes again.

She was at least still very curious about the mailbox. Whatever it was, maybe it was starting to be a good idea. Maybe this was all starting to be a little bit her fault. “I’ll be right back,” she said softly, and touched his face, just briefly, before getting to her feet and running the rest of the way down the alley.

It wasn’t far. Really they should have gotten here a lot sooner. And there was a wide, deserted street in front of here, lined with empty storefronts. None of the streetlights worked. Miss Pauling wasn’t sure where she was supposed to find a mailbox. What kind of a mailbox? And why? She did what she thought more prudent, instead, lifting her gun, firing three times in the air. Then, at the top of her lungs, she shouted, “MEDIC!”

In less than a minute, there was a squeal of tires and a vehicle screeched around the corner up the street. Sniper’s camper, which was odd actually, now that she thought of it. He hadn’t actually been on this mission, and it was near impossible to borrow the thing. She waved as the old beast lurched and rattled to the curb. Before it had even stopped, Medic had swung out. Classical music blared heroically from the cab of the vehicle. “Fraulein, where are you hurt?” he demanded. If he was not exactly concerned, he was at least less obviously enthusiastic than he was when any of the mercs needed help.

“Not me, Scout.”

“Oh.” All the urgency went out of the doctor. He pushed his glasses up his nose and shook his head. “Well, fine. Where is  _he_  hurt?”

Heavy had killed the music, stopped the car, and gotten out. “Scout is not here.”

Miss Pauling turned to head back down the alley. “He’s back that way. We need to go, he’s really…”

“Where is the briefcase?”

Pauling made a faintly irritated noise. “It’s fine, it’s safe. I hid it. We need to go.”

“Scout has let you come here on your own, with your gun and your shouting? And no briefcase?” Heavy looked down the alleyway with a grim expression and muttered something in Russian. It didn’t sound friendly.

“He couldn’t exactly stop me, I don’t think he was conscious. He lost a lot of blood. And it’s not like I could carry him—”

“In that situation that is when you leave him,” Medic advised helpfully.

Miss Pauling glared at him. “Medic, your  _job_.”

“When  _you_  leave him, Miss Pauling. In that situation I believe I am meant to do something about it. Though Scout is a surprising case. He has much more blood than one thinks. How bad was he?”

“I don’t know! Bad enough? Please, let’s go.”

“Could he still walk? Both legs attached? Retains most limbs?” Medic glanced rather regretfully at the van. “I suppose I will need to unpack my instruments. They are all in order. A shame.”

“If he lets Miss Pauling go alone when he is still able to be walking, soon he will not be,” Heavy growled. He had gone to unload his minigun from the back of the camper and now he hefted it menacingly. “He at least told you to look for a mailbox? Miss Pauling, I apologize for letting him do my job. I have taken a chance with your safety, and I am sorry.”

“It  _is_ your fault for sending him,” Medic pointed out, ever helpful when other people were wrong. “It doesn’t matter if he told her to look for a mailbox, nobody listens to Scout.”

“ _You_ aren’t listening! I’m  _fine!”_ Miss Pauling gave up on trying to convince them that the situation was at all urgent and turned on her heel.

There was a loud thud and a clatter from down the alley. Heavy moved with surprising speed, pushing Miss Pauling to the side, away from the dark mouth of the alley. Medic had also sprang into a position flanking the alley, and took her arm to pull her to his other side.

“Who goes?” Heavy shouted, and the gun in his hands began to whirr menacingly as it heated up.

“Hold your fire!”

This was Engineer. Miss Pauling poked her head around the corner and received a cordial tip of his hardhat in greeting. “Evenin’, Miss Pauling. Think maybe you dropped something.” He handed her the briefcase. “It’s a little scuffed in the corner, I tripped on it just now. Dainty handcuffs you got there, must’ve slid right off your wrist. If you want, I can jimmy that open, show you how to put ‘em on a bit more snug.”

_I am going to be stuffed in a duffel bag with bricks and thrown into a reservoir._ “Oh. Thank you. Don’t tell anybody.”

“Oh, no ma’am! Honest mistake, happen to anyone. You know me an’ Pyro won’t say anything. Now, ‘course Scout won’t either.”

_Fuck, I killed Scout._ “Oh god, is he…?”

“No, no! He does tend to jabber, that’s certain, but don’t you worry, Miss Pauling, he knows to shut up when it’s important. No, he was bringing it when me an’ Pyro caught up. Flipped a coin, I got to carry the briefcase.”

Pyro brought up the rear, and she could hear him grumbling unintelligibly to himself, even though he didn’t seem unduly burdened with Scout slung over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

Medic was still vacillating on the sidewalk, unsure whether to bother unpacking his full surgical kit. He had a hand on the door of the cab and looked up hopefully. “How bad?”

“ ~~ **He’s had worse.**~~ ”

Engineer added, “Got cut up pretty good. Mean one up his back, sayin’ nothin’ of the little bit of birdshot he caught in t he shoulder. Damn fool idea, shotgun in an alley.”

“’M fine,” Scout contributed, weakly, as Pyro obligingly let him down. He sat heavily and leaned against the wall behind him, closing his eyes again. “Thanks, pal, I owe you one. Hell with  _you_ , Engi. You figure out somethin’ better ‘n a shotgun when you got five guys trying to cut your spine out, I will be first in the goddamn line. We done? Maybe? Please? Doc?”

Medic shrugged. “If you are just bleeding, then I think first Heavy would like a word. It would be inefficient to do anything before he is done.”

Miss Pauling hadn’t even noticed his shoulder and now she felt terrible. And really, properly tired and exasperated with the way the whole night had gone. “No. Heavy, I have questions. Medic, you patch Scout up, we’re going home. Pyro, you’re with Engi, Engi, where’s the truck?”

Engineer jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, back down the alley. “Parked down that way. Sorry we were late, that’s some pile of bodies you two dropped. If ya’ll are smellin’ barbecue right now, by the by, that’s Pyro’s doing. Hope we did good enough to save you a trip back out here, Miss Pauling. Anyway, the alley narrows out a bit too much for us to have gone all the way through, so we’ll walk back. We’ll pick ‘er up, and circle round to here. Miss Pauling, you ridin’ back with us? We got a full trip of Gunsmoke ahead, gonna be a hoot.”

~~“ **You can tell it’s good because it has ‘smoke’ in the title. I don’t know what it’s about, but you know what they say about where there’s smoke.”**~~

“We have the Vienna Philharmonic and Dvorak, Miss Pauling, you do not need to go with them.”

“I have a  _headache,_ Heavy,” she answered, curtly. “Come with me.”

She strode briskly away, around the nearest corner, trying not to storm off. Everything was fine. It was done, they’d finished it up, she’d been stupid and done stupid things because she had a stupid crush, but it was all fine. Probably she would not even be fired. She paced a few times, stomping out her temper, and sighed at Heavy when he joined her. “I have had better evenings.”

“I apologize, Miss Pauling. Was a mistake, did not think there would be trouble. Not more trouble than Scout could handle.”

“Yes, well, and then I nearly got him killed. On accident, but still.”

"Do not feel bad to almost kill Scout on accident, Matroyshka. Is sometimes difficult to not kill Scout on purpose. Scout is paid a lot of money to be killed by people."

Pauling laughed, a little helplessly. “I don’t follow the logic of that statement. I…I’m sorry, Heavy, I’m not mad. I am mad, not at you. Not at him, either, even though he is dumb and he drives me crazy. I was careless tonight, and I wish you hadn’t sent him. Why did you?”

Heavy shrugged, uncomfortable. “Was favour. You know how this goes, with favours. Medic has the Vienna Philharmonic on radio cassette. Twenty-three radio cassettes, many hours. A pleasant drive! Sniper has a working radio cassette player. He wants the night off to call his mama. We will borrow his camping van. His camping van needs new transmission, Engineer can fix. Engineer wants a look at Sascha. I make many arrangements.”

“Well, I think you owe Scout double for this.”

“Oh, was not favour from Scout. Was  _for_ Scout.” Heavy looked around conspiratorially and lowered his voice. “Matroyshka, Scout has very much a crush on you.” He tapped his nose slyly. “You are not telling him I told you.”

_I could have been a nurse. I would have been an okay nurse. I would have had a job with maybe some double shifts sometimes and maybe some attractive doctors and I would have been helping people, even if they are all bleedy and horrible when they’re dying. Even if I have a terrible bedside manner, I would have had to put up with a lot less nonsense than I do from these ridiculous mercenaries._

“He said you asked him to do it.”

“Ehh…I needed other favour. There is a raccoon in my ceiling, I need someone small to kill him. Scout does not ask for many favours. Sometimes to get a favour from Scout you must make him think he owes you…eh. The word is for after something is already done.”

“Retroactively. Retroactively, you think Scout owes you a favour because you made him babysit me on a ridiculous little job in the middle of nowhere, and he got cut in half with a machete and shot himself in the shoulder and the whole time had to deal with me trying to help him, which I am terrible at. Scout owes you a favour for that.”

“Well, you do not tell it to him this way, Matroyshka. You tell him, ‘Scout, this is easy job, you go for a beautiful walk with Miss Pauling under the stars, you talk and have a nice time. If foolish, unworthy men try to hurt her, you destroy them like they are rabid dogs, and she is very grateful. Then you kill a raccoon in my ceiling and we are even.’ This was my plan.” Heavy rubbed his neck sheepishly. “Now it looks like a bad plan. I am sorry. I will owe you both a favour. It is late, Matroyshka, we should go.”

“Yes, we should.” These ridiculous mercenaries. She would have been a terrible nurse anyway. She had spent far too much time around all of them now, even Scout, because she could found herself thinking that maybe Heavy was making some sense. And maybe she was doing some mental calculations of her own, and maybe a part of the evening was still salvageable. “Okay. So you owe me a favour.” She added, remembering, “And you owe Scout a favour. A  _big_ favour.”

“Yes. I do not insult you by asking if you need anyone killed, but if you wish, I will help you with moving large things or reaching what is high on shelves.”

Miss Pauling took her glasses off and cleaned them on the sleeve of her…white blouse. Right, new cardigan tomorrow. She was going to need to order maybe another dozen. “Well, you can pay me back right now if you’ll tell him I’m sorry for being awful and that he did a good job.” She thought for a few more moments. “Also, I will take care of your raccoon.”

Heavy grinned, broadly and delightedly. “Miss Pauling, this is a wonderful idea.”

“Well, it might make him feel better, anyway, thank you, Heavy.”

He laughed, loud and long and deep. He continued to smile as he put a massive hand on her shoulder, fondly, big-brotherly. “Oh, no, Matroyshka. I will not do this thing for you. I will get you things from tall shelves. No, now I will do Scout a favour. You tell him yourself.”

“…That’s fair.”


	2. Epilogue - Favours

Favours - An Epilogue in Three Parts

Well, anyway, four and a half hours of classical music were at least going to be quieter from the back of Sniper’s camper. Still boring, but quieter. It was maybe the only redeeming part of Scout’s evening so far. Though that wasn’t really fair, it was good that they had the camper at all. The back of Engie’s truck was quieter, but also a lot less comfortable and difficult (not impossible) to sleep in. And, god, he wanted to sleep. Just sleep and bleed and sulk and, well, maybe it wasn’t actually all that much worse than any other night of work, anyway. Also on the bright side, Heavy was probably lurking around somewhere to beat the shit out of him, but at least he hadn’t done it yet.

And then there was a knock on the door of the camper. Aw, god. He rolled over on the bed and curled up to face the wall as the door creaked open. A few more moments, that still counted for something.

“Yeah, okay. Come on, Heavy. I know, I fucked up, I ain’t gonna do it again. But before you take it outta my hide, brother, I ain’t doin’ it again because you ain’t ever gonna _ask_  me to. I would get between Miss Pauling and a bullet any day, you know that ain’t the problem, but goddamn. I dunno how in the blue screamin' hell you get that girl to do a thing she don’t want to.”

“Well, I came here to say I’m sorry, but honestly, I was only trying to help.”

 _Oh Jesus. Up up up, fix this you fucking moron. Shit._ “Miss Pauling, wait, I…” She’d climbed into the back of the van and shut the door and he’d hit his head on the damn low hanging ceiling above Sniper’s stupid bunk and what was he doing on the floor now, stupid damn camper, should’ve rode in Engie’s truck. “Ow. I didn’t mean that, listen, I’m sorry.”

Miss Pauling sat down on the floor beside him, and smiled. “What for, Scout? I was awful. I am terrible at helping and I forget that you are really good at your job. I  _am_  sorry. Thanks for putting up with me.”

“Oh, naw, Miss Pauling. S’fine, don’t say that.” The camper lurched forward and they started the long drive back. “Hey, ain’t you sittin’ up front? They got their damn classy dead people music, you can’t wanna miss that.”

Pauling grimaced. “Nearly five hours of Czech concertos. Concertos? Concerti? I don’t know, anyway, no thank you. Or five hours of cowboy radio with Engi and Pyro? No, I have a headache and they both think they can sing. I figured you would mostly be sleeping, but it’s okay if you don’t. We could talk.”

“Talk. To me.” _We gotta stop this damn death trap of a camper, Medic did something he shouldn’t have and now I am going into shock and I gave myself a concussion and what the hell I am actually going to die._

“Well, with you, if you wanted. It’s fine if you want to sleep, I kind of gave you hell. But I did hope you would explain about the mailbox. I was also thinking I’d tell you about the time I got expelled from nursing school.”

She smiled again and maybe, just maybe, and Scout didn’t care if he was imagining it or in the middle of a massive brain hemorrhage that would kill him and this was the last thing in the entire goddamn world he’d ever see, because maybe it was a flirty sort of smile. And maybe this was a much better night of work than usual. And maybe even the faint strains of the New World Symphony weren’t quite so boring if you got to listen to them while Miss Pauling laughed.

———

“Leave your message when it beeps, boys, you know how the machine works. Ivan, not until  _after_  the beep.”

…

…

…

…

*BEEP*

_“Hey, ma? Uh, it’s me. Umm, I gotta question. Favour, more of, maybe. I mean, first how are ya, hope you’re havin’ a good weekend. I’ll call you back later sometime, ma, to talk, but if you can do somethin’ for me…uhm. Well, there’s this girl I…work with. Yeah, girl at the office. She’s real nice, ma, you’d like her. I like her. I think we’re gettin’ to be friends. Um, anyway, we were out doing this thing for work. Umm. Company picnic. Not just her an’ me, ma, it was a work thing, don’t get any ideas. So she has this sweater…had…I kinda ruined it a little. Like a lotta bl…blue ink. Yeah, the kind that don’t come out any way that I know of an’ also she maybe ripped one of the sleeves. Anyway, ma, I kinda feel bad about it, so you maybe wouldn’t mind sending me a catalog? For a sweater place? I don’t know from sweaters, ma, this one is purple, and she’s maybe about your size? No, a bit smaller. …That is not me callin’ you fat, ma, I just mean I don’t know what size she is. I’ll figure it out. I’ll ask one of the guys to help, I’m sure one of ‘em has to have a wife or somethin’. I just ain’t sure where to start. If it ain’t too much trouble, ma, I’d really appreciate it. I gotta go, break’s over, but I’ll call you later. Love you, ma. Bye.”_

——-

It was a six hundred dollar sweater. Correction: it was _at least_ a six hundred dollar sweater. Miss Pauling didn’t know an awful lot about sweaters, but she did know that she could get a dozen for less than a hundred dollars if she called the manufacturer directly and pretended she was a store manager at an outlet mall.

Apparently Scout really knew sweaters. Because this was a hell of a sweater. Cashmere. Or something even better than cashmere, because once upon a time she had worn cashmere on a regular basis and whatever this thing was made of blew cashmere out of the water. Her hands sank into it when she lifted it out of the lily white box on her desk. It was heavy and cool in her hands, like water.

And it was the color of the sort of purple you only saw in a sunset. If Scout had asked what color her old sweater was, she would have said lavender, in the haughty way that girls have about knowing about more than six colours. She wouldn’t have been able to name a colour for this sweater, because she couldn’t think of anything off the top of her head that was expressible in a single word. Lilac, but only if it’s the lilac of the bush that grew outside her bedroom window, and only in the first week it bloomed and only just at dawn. You know. Lilac.

And it smelled like angels and she wanted to cry because it was lovely and beautiful and she would never be able to wear it except for maybe five minutes at a time in her apartment in front of the mirror. If she’d recently vacuumed. She couldn’t even try it on now, she had spilled coffee down the front of her blouse three hours ago and the stain had long dried up. But it wasn’t the sort of sweater she could wear while she had a coffee stain on her blouse. Or without showering first. Or on a date with the stupid dumb boy who would buy her a six hundred dollar magic sweater.

Anyway, technically it was a cardigan, with iridescent buttons of nacre or mother of pearl or actual pearls, she couldn’t tell. Didn’t know the difference. Shiny. Slightly, impossibly warm when she touched then. Or the quality they had of seeming to glow with an internal light just made them seem warm. What sort of person even wore this kind of sweater.

It was worth more than her car. Her car, which needed new tires, which were also, tragically, worth more than her car. She was never going to get to wear this sweater. Not while her car needed new tires.  _Maybe if I hit Scout with my car, he would buy me some new tires. He really didn’t need to get me a new sweater._

She buried her face in it for a moment, just to breathe it in and pretend that she had a life that would let her wear a beautiful sweater while driving with the top down in a white convertible, with a stupid dumb cute boy dozing in the passenger seat on the way to the West Coast, where they would stay at a charming bed and breakfast and she would fuck his brains out.

Oops. That had gone a little far. This was a really gorgeous sweater. “I need to sell this sweater,” she said, out loud, because this was reality and she was a practical girl who needed new tires. Stupid Scout. Spy had probably picked it out for him, anyway. 

  
But. Scout had written the note. And that she could keep, in a locked drawer in her desk, in a file marked Quarrying Equipment Requisitions/Manifests.


End file.
